I am sensible of the honor you do me in
inviting me to give this memorial lecture. May I thank you, Governor, your kind
and generous welcome.

When my
distinguished predecessor delivered his Fulton speech, exactly fifty
years ago, he journeyed hither by train in the company of the President of the
United States. On the way, they played poker to pass the time. And the President
won 75 dollars -- quite a sum in those non-inflationary times for an unemployed
former Prime Minister. But in view of the historic impact of his speech on
American opinion and subsequently on United States foreign policy, Sir Winston Churchill
later recorded that his loss was one of the best investments he had ever made.

I did not travel here by train; nor in the company of the President of the
United States; nor did I play poker. I don't have the right kind of face for it.
But there is some similarity in the circumstances of fifty years ago and today.

Mr. Churchill spoke not long after the second world war. Towards the end of
that great conflict, the wartime allies had forged new international
institutions for post-war co-operation. There was in those days great optimism,
not least in the United States, about a world without conflict presided over
benevolently by bodies like the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, and the
GATT. But the high hopes reposed in them were increasingly disappointed as
Stalin lowered the Iron Curtain over Eastern Europe, made no secret of his
global ambitions and became antagonist rather than ally. Churchill's speech here
was the first serious warning of what was afoot, and it helped to wake up the
entire West.

In due course, that speech bore rich fruit in the new institutions forged to
strengthen the West against Stalin's assault. The Marshall Plan laid the foundations for Europe's postwar economic
recovery. The Truman Doctrine made plain that America would resist communist subversion
of democracy. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization mobilized America's allies for mutual
defense against the Soviet steamroller. And the European Coal and Steel Community, devised to help reconcile
the former
European enemies, evolved over time into the European Community.

Stalin had overplayed his hand. By attempting to destroy international
cooperation, he succeeded in stimulating it along more realistic lines -- and not
just through Western "Cold War" institutions like NATO. As the West recovered
and united, growing in prosperity and confidence, so it also breathed new life
into some of the first set of post-war institutions like the GATT and the IMF.
Without the Russians to obstruct them, these bodies helped to usher in what the
Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, has ruefully christened the "Golden Age of
Capitalism". The standard of living of ordinary people rose to levels that would
have astonished our grandparents; there were regional wars, but no direct clash
between the superpowers; and the economic, technological and military
superiority of the West eventually reached such a peak that the communist system
was forced into, first reform, then surrender, and finally liquidation.

None of this, however, was pre-ordained. It happened in large part because of
what Churchill said here fifty years ago. He spoke at a watershed: one set of
international institutions had shown themselves to be wanting; another had yet
to be born. And it was his speech, not the "force" celebrated by Marx, which
turned out to be the midwife of history.

Today we are at what could be a similar watershed. The long twilight struggle
of the Cold War ended five years ago with complete victory for the West and for
subject peoples of the communist empire -- and I very much include the
Russian people in that description. It ended amid high hopes of a New World
Order. But those hopes have been grievously disappointed. Bosnia, Somalia, and
the rise of Islamic militancy all point to instability and conflict rather than
co-operation and harmony.

The international bodies, in which our hopes were reposed anew after 1989 and
1991, have given us neither prosperity nor security. There is a pervasive
anxiety about the drift of events. It remains to be seen whether this generation
will respond to these threats with imagination and courage of Sir Winston,
President Truman, and the wise men of those years.

But, first, how did we get to our present straits? Like the break-up of all empires, the break-up of the Soviet empire wrought
enormous changes way beyond its borders. Many of these were indisputably for the good:

- a more co-operative superpower relationship between the United
States and Russia;

- the spread of democracy and civil society in Eastern Europe and the Baltics;

- better prospects for resolving regional conflicts like those in South Africa
and the Middle East, once Soviet mischief-making had been removed;

- the discrediting of socialist economic planning by the exposure of its
disastrous consequences in Russia and Eastern Europe;

- and the removal of Soviet obstruction from the United Nations and its
agencies.

These were -- and still are -- real benefits for which we should be grateful.

But in the euphoria which
accompanied the Cold War's end -- just as in what Churchill's private secretary
called "the fatal hiatus" of 1944 to 1946 -- we failed to notice other, less
appealing, consequences of the peace. Like a giant refrigerator that had finally
broken down after years of poor maintenance, the Soviet empire in its collapse
released all the ills of ethnic, social and political backwardness which it had
frozen in suspended animation for so long:

- Suddenly, border disputes between the successor states erupted into small
wars in, for instance, Armenia and Georgia.

- Within these new countries the ethnic divisions aggravated by Soviet
policies of Russification and forced population transfer produced violence,
instability, and quarrels over citizenship.

- The absence of the legal and customary foundations of a free economy led to
a distorted "robber capitalism," one dominated by the combined forces of the
mafia and the old communist nomenklatura, with little appeal to ordinary people.

- The moral vacuum created by communism in everyday life was filled for some
by a revived Orthodox Church, but for others by the rise in crime, corruption,
gambling, and drug addiction -- all contributing to a spreading ethic of luck, a
belief that economic life is a
zero-sum game, and an irrational nostalgia for a
totalitarian order without totalitarian methods.

- And, in these Hobbesian conditions, primitive political ideologies, which
have been extinct in Western Europe and America for two generations, surfaced and
flourished, all peddling fantasies of imperial glory to compensate for domestic
squalor.

No one can forecast with confidence where this
will lead. I believe that it will take long years of civic experience and
patient institution-building for Russia to become a normal society.
Neo-communists may well return to power in the immediate future, postponing
normality; but whoever wins the forthcoming Russian elections will almost
certainly institute a more assertive foreign policy, one less friendly to the
United States.

A revival of Russian power will create new problems
-- just when
the world is struggling to cope with problems which the Soviet collapse has
itself created outside the old borders of the USSR. When Soviet power broke down, so did the control it exercised, however
fitfully and irresponsibly, over rogue states like Syria, Iraq, and Gaddafi's
Libya. They have in effect been released to commit whatever mischief they wish
without bothering to check with their arms supplier and bank manager. Note that
Saddam Hussein 's invasion of Kuwait took place after the USSR was gravely
weakened and had ceased to be Iraq's protector.

The Soviet collapse has also aggravated the single most awesome threat of
modern times: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These weapons,
and the ability to develop and deliver them, are today acquired by
middle-income countries with modest populations such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and
Syria -- acquired sometimes from other powers like China and North Korea, but
most ominously from former Soviet arsenals, or unemployed scientists, or from
organized criminal rings, all by way of a growing international black market.

According to Stephen Hadley, formerly President Bush's assistant secretary
for international security policy (and I quote): "By the end of the decade, we could see over
20 countries with ballistic missiles, 9 with nuclear weapons, 10 with biological
weapons, and up to 30 with chemical weapons."

According to other official United States sources, all of northeast Asia, southeast
Asia, much of the Pacific and most of Russia could soon be threatened by the
latest North Korean missiles. Once they are available in the Middle East and
North Africa, all the capitals of Europe will be within target range; and on
present trends a direct threat to American shores is likely to mature -- if that
is the right word -- early in
the next century.

Add weapons of mass destruction to rogue states, and you have a highly toxic
compound. As the CIA has pointed out: "Of the nations that have or are acquiring
weapons of mass destruction, many are led by megalomaniacs and strongmen of
proven inhumanity or by weak, unstable or illegitimate governments." In some
instances, the potential capabilities at the command of these unpredictable
figures is either equal to -- or even more destructive than -- the Soviet threat
to the West in the 1960s. It is that serious.

Indeed, it is even more serious than that. We in the West may have to deal
with a number of possible adversaries, each with different characteristics. In
some cases their mentalities differ from ours even more than did those of our
old Cold War enemy. So the potential for misunderstanding is great and we must
therefore be very clear in our own minds about our strategic intentions, and
just as clear in signaling these to potential aggressors.

And that is only the gravest threat. There are others.

Within the Islamic world the Soviet collapse undermined the legitimacy of
radical secular regimes and gave an impetus to the rise of radical Islam.
Radical Islamist movements now constitute a major revolutionary threat not only
to the Saddams and Assads but also to conservative Arab regimes, who are allies
of the West. Indeed they challenge the very idea of Western economic presence.
Hence, the random acts of violence designed to drive American companies and
tourists out of the Islamic world.

In short my friends, the world remains a very dangerous place, indeed one menaced by
more unstable and complex threats than a decade ago. But because the risk of
total nuclear annihilation has been removed, we in the West have lapsed into an
alarming complacency about the risks that remain. We have run down our defenses
and relaxed our guard. And to comfort ourselves that we were doing the right
thing, we have increasingly placed our trust in international institutions to
safeguard our future. But international bodies have not generally performed
well. Indeed, we have learned that they can't perform well unless we refrain
from utopian aims, give them practical tasks, and provide them with the means
and backing to carry them out.

Now let's have a look at some of these
institutional bodies and their failure.

Perhaps the best example of utopian aims is
what is called "multilateralism."
This
is the doctrine that international actions are most justified when they are
untainted by the national interests of the countries which are called upon to
carry them out. Multilateralism briefly became the doctrine of several Western
powers in the early nineties, when the United Nations Security Council was no
longer hamstrung by the Soviet veto. It seemed to promise a new age in which the
United Nations would act as world policeman to settle regional conflicts.

Of course, there was always a fair amount of hypocrisy embedded in
the multilateralist doctrine. The Haiti intervention by United States forces acting under a
United Nations mandate, for instance, was defended as an exercise in restoring a
Haitian democracy that had really never existed; but it might be better described in
the language of Clausewitz as the continuation of American immigration control
by other means. But honest multilateralism without the spur of national interest
has led to intervention without clear aims.

No one could criticize the humane impulse to step in and relieve the
suffering created by the civil war in Somalia. But it soon became clear that the
humanitarian effort could not enjoy long-term success without a return to civil
order. And no internal force was available to supply this. Hence, the intervention created a painful choice: either the United Nations would make
Somalia into a colony and spend decades engaged in "nation-building," or the United Nations
forces would eventually withdraw and Somalia revert to its prior anarchy. Since
America and the United Nations were unwilling to govern Somalia for thirty years, it
followed that the job of feeding the hungry and helping the sick must be left to
civilian aid agencies and private charities.

Conclusion: Military intervention without an attainable purpose creates as
many problems as it solves.

This was further demonstrated in the former Yugoslavia, where early action to
arm the victims of aggression, so that they could defend themselves, would have
been far more effective than the United Nations' half-hearted, multilateral intervention. A
neutral peacekeeping operation, lightly-armed, in an area where there was no
peace to keep, served mainly to consolidate the gains from aggression.
Eventually, the United Nations peacekeepers became hostages, used by the aggressor to deter
more effective action against him. All in all, a sorry and tragic episode, ended by the
Croatian army, NATO air power, and American diplomacy.

The combined effect of interventions in Bosnia, Somalia and, indeed, Rwanda
has been to shake the self-confidence of key Western powers and to tarnish the
reputation of the United Nations. And now a dangerous trend is evident: as the Haiti case
shows, the Security Council seems increasingly prepared to widen the legal basis
for intervention. We are seeing, in fact, that classically dangerous combination
-- a growing disproportion between theoretical claims and practical means.

Compare this hubris with the failure to act effectively against
the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and the means to
deliver them. As I have already argued, these are falling into dangerous hands.

Given the intellectual climate in the West today, it's probably unrealistic
to expect military intervention to remove the source of the threat, as for
example against North Korea -- except perhaps when the offender invites us to do
so by invading a small neighboring country. Even then, as we now know, our
success in destroying Saddam's nuclear and chemical weapons capability was
limited.

And we cannot be sure that the efforts by inspectors of the International
Atomic Energy Authority to prevent Saddam putting civil nuclear power to
military uses have been any more successful. We may reasonably suspect
that they have not.

What then can we do? There is no mysterious diplomatic means to disarm a
state which is not willing to be disarmed. As Frederick the Great mordantly
observed: "Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." Arms
control and non-proliferation measures have a role in restraining rogue states,
but only when combined with other measures.

If America and its allies can't deal with the problem directly by
pre-emptive military means, they must at least diminish the incentive for the
Saddams, the Gaddafis, and others to acquire new weapons in the first place. That
means, my friends, the West must install effective ballistic missile defense which would
protect us and our armed forces, reduce or even nullify the rogue state's
arsenal, and enable us to retaliate.

So the potential contribution of ballistic missile
defense to peace and
stability seems to me to be very great. First, and most obviously, it promises the possibility of protection if
deterrence fails; or if there is a limited and unauthorized use of nuclear
missiles. Second, it would also preserve the capability of the West to project its
power overseas. Third, it would diminish the dangers of one country overturning the regional
balance of power by acquiring these weapons. Fourth, it would strengthen our existing deterrent against a hostile nuclear
super-power by preserving the West's powers of retaliation. And fifth, it would enhance diplomacy's power to restrain proliferation by
diminishing the utility of offensive systems.

Acquiring an effective global
defense against ballistic missiles is therefore
a matter of the greatest importance and urgency. But the risk is that thousands
of people may be killed by an attack which forethought and wise preparation
might have prevented.

It is, of course, often the case in foreign affairs that statesmen are
dealing with problems for which there is no ready solution. They must manage
them as best they can.

That might be true of nuclear proliferation, but no such excuses
can be made for the European Union's activities at the end of the Cold War. It
faced a task so obvious and achievable as to count as an almost explicit duty
laid down by History: namely, the speedy incorporation of the new Central
European democracies -- Poland, Hungary, and what was then Czechoslovakia -- within
the European Union's economic and political structures.

Early entry into Europe was the wish of the new democracies; it would help to
stabilize them politically and smooth their transition to market economies;
it would ratify the post-Cold-War settlement in Europe. Given the stormy past of
that region -- the inhabitants are said to produce more history than they can
consume locally -- everyone should have wished to see it settled economically and
politically inside a stable European structure.

Why was this not done? Why was every obstacle put in the way of the new
market democracies? Why were their exports subject to the kind of absurd quotas
that have until now been reserved for Japan? And why is there still no room at
the Inn?

The answer is that the European Union was too busy contemplating its own
navel. Both the Commission and a majority -- Both the commission and the
majority of member-governments were committed
to an early "deepening" of the European Union -- that is, centralizing more power in the European
Union's
supranational institutions; and they felt that a "widening" of it -- that is,
admitting new members -- would complicate, obstruct, or even prevent this process.

So, while the "deepening" went ahead, they arranged to keep the Central
Europeans out by the diplomats' favorite tactic: negotiations to admit them. In
making this decision, the European Union put extravagant and abstract schemes
ahead of practical necessities in the manner of doctrinaire "projectors" from
Jonathan Swift down to the present -- and with the usual disastrous results. The "visionary" schemes of "deepening"
either have failed or are failing.

The "fixed" exchange rates of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism have made
the yo-yo seem like a symbol of rigidity; they crashed in and out of it in
September 1992 and have shown no signs of obeying the diktats of Brussels since
then.

The next stage of monetary union agreed at Maastricht
-- the single currency --
is due in 1999 when member-states will have to achieve strict budgetary
criteria. With three weeks -- three years to go, only Luxembourg fully meets these tests; the
attempts by other countries to meet them on time have pushed up unemployment,
hiked interest rates, depressed economic activity, and created civil unrest.

And for what? Across the continent businessmen and bankers increasingly
question the economic need for a single currency at all. It is essentially a
political symbol -- the currency of a European state and people which don't
actually exist, except perhaps in the mind of a Brussels bureaucrat.

Yet these symbols were pursued at a real political cost in Central Europe.
The early enthusiasm for the West and Western institutions began to wane. Facing
tariff barriers and quotas in Western Europe, the Central Europeans began to
erect their own. And those politicians there who had bravely pursued tough-minded
policies of economic reform, believing that they were following the advice of
European leaders, found themselves left in the lurch when the going got rough.
Only the Czech Republic under the very able leadership of
Vaclav Klaus has remained on
course to a normal society.

In the last few years, the democratic reformers have fallen one by one in the
former communist satellites, to be replaced by neo-communist governments
promising the impossible: transition to a market economy without tears. This is
a tragedy in itself, and an avoidable one. But with Russia lurching politically
into a more authoritarian nationalist course, and the question of Central
-- Central Europe's membership of NATO still unsettled, it has more than merely economic
implications.

Which brings me to my last example of institutional failure,
mercifully only a partial one counterbalanced by some successes, namely NATO.
NATO is a very fine military instrument; it won the Cold War when it had a clear
military doctrine. But an instrument can't define its own purposes, and since
the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Western statesmen have found it difficult to
give NATO a clear one.

Indeed, they have shilly-shallied on the four major questions facing the
Alliance:

Should Russia be regarded as a potential threat or a partner?
(Russia may be
about to answer that in clearer fashion than we would like.)

Should NATO turn its attention to "out of area" where most of the post-Cold
War threats, such as nuclear proliferation, now lie?

Should NATO admit the new democracies of Central Europe as full members with
full responsibilities as quickly as prudently possible?

Should Europe develop its own "defense identity" in NATO, even though this is
a concept driven entirely by politics and has damaging military implications?

Such questions tend to be decided not in the abstract, not at
inter-governmental conferences convened to look into the crystal ball, but on
the anvil of necessity and in the heat of crisis. And that is exactly what happened
in the long-running crisis over Bosnia.

At first, the supporters of a European foreign policy and a European
defense
identity declared the former Yugoslavia "Europe's crisis" and asked the United
States to
keep out. The United States was glad to do so. But the European Union's farcical
involvement only made matters worse and, after a while, was effectively
abandoned. Then the United Nations became involved, and asked NATO to be its military
agent in its peacekeeping operations. Finally, when the United Nations-NATO personnel were taken hostage, the
United States intervened,
employed NATO air-power with real effect, forced the combatants to the
conference table, for better or worse imposed an agreement on them, and now
heads a large NATO contingent that is enforcing it.

In the course of stamping its authority on events, the United
States also stamped its
authority on the European members of NATO. And since the logistical supply chain
goes through Hungary, it drew the Central Europeans into NATO operations in a
small way. Whether NATO will apply the logic of this crisis in future strategic
planning remains to be seen; but for the armchair theorists of a closed, passive,
and divided NATO, Bosnia has been no end of a lesson.

These various institutional failures are worrying enough in their own terms
and in our own times. If we look ahead still further to the end of the twenty
first century, however, an alarming and unstable future is on the cards.

Consider the number of medium-to-large states in the world that
have now embarked on a free-market revolution: India, China, Brazil, possibly
Russia. Add to these the present economic great powers: the United States and Japan, and,
if the federalists get their way, a European superstate with its own independent
foreign and defense policy separate from, and perhaps inimical to, the United
States. What we see here in year 2096 is an unstable world in which there are more
than half a dozen "great powers," all with their own clients, all vulnerable if
they stand alone, all capable of increasing their power and influence if they
form the right kind of alliance, and all engaged willy-nilly in perpetual
diplomatic maneuvers to ensure that their relative positions improve rather
than deteriorate. In other words, 2096 might look like 1914 played on a somewhat
larger stage.

This need not come to pass if the Atlantic Alliance remains as it is today:
in essence, America as the dominant power surrounded by allies which generally
follow her lead. Such are the realities of population, resources, technology and
capital that if America remains the dominant partner in a united West, and
militarily engaged in Europe, then the West can continue to be the dominant
power in the world as a whole.

What is to be done? I believe that what is now required is a new and imaginative
Atlantic initiative. Its purpose must be to redefine Atlanticism in the light of
the challenges I have been describing. There are rare moments when history is
open and its course changed by means such as these. We may be at just such a
moment now.

First, security. As my discussion of the Bosnian crisis
demonstrated, the key lies in two reforms: opening NATO membership to Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and extending NATO's role so that it is able to
operate out of area.

Both reforms will require a change in NATO's existing procedures. An attack
on the territory of one member must, of course, continue to be regarded
unambiguously as an attack on that of all; but that principle of universality
need not apply to out-of-area activities. Indeed, it needs to be recognized that
a wider role for NATO can't be achieved if every member-state has to
participate in an out-of-area operation before it can go ahead. What is required
are flexible arrangements which, to use a fashionable phrase, permit the
creation of "coalitions of the willing."

Would NATO expansion mark a new division of Europe and give Russia the right
to intervene in states outside the fold? Not in the least. Among other reasons,
we could hold out the possibility of admitting those countries which
subsequently demonstrate a commitment to democratic values and which have
trained military forces up to an acceptable standard. That would be a powerful
incentive for such states to pursue the path of democratic reform and defense
preparedness.

NATO also provides the best available mechanism for co-coordinating the
contribution of America's allies to a global system of ballistic -- ballistic missile
defense: that is, one providing protection against missile attack from whatever
source it comes.

If, however, the United States is to build this global ballistic defense
system with its allies, it needs the assurance that the Alliance is a permanent
one resting on solid foundations of American leadership. That raises, in my
view, very serious doubts about the currently fashionable idea of a separate
European "defense identity" within the Alliance.

Essentially, this is another piece of political symbolism, associated among
European federalists with long-term aspirations for a European state with its
own foreign and defense policy. It would create the armed forces of a country
which does not exist. But, like the single currency, it would have damaging
practical consequences in the here and now.

In the first place, it contains the germs of a major future Trans-Atlantic
rift. And in the second, it has no military rationale or benefits. Indeed, it
has potentially severe military drawbacks. Even a French general admitted that
during the Gulf War the United States forces were "the eyes and ears" of the French
troops. Without America, NATO is a political talking shop, not a military force.

Nor is that likely to be changed in any reasonably foreseeable circumstances.
Defense expenditure has been falling sharply in almost all European states in
recent years. Even if this process were now halted and reversed, it would take
many years before Europe could hope to replace what America presently makes
available to the Alliance by way of command and control facilities, airlift
capacity, surveillance, and sheer fire-power. Defense policy can't be built upon
political symbolism and utopian projects of nation-building which ignore or even
defy military logic and fiscal prudence.

But even a vigorous and successful NATO would not survive
indefinitely in a West divided along the lines of trade and economics. One of
the great threats to Atlantic unity in recent years has been a succession of
trade wars, ranging from steel to pasta, which have strained relations across
the Atlantic. So the second element of a New Atlantic Initiative must take the
form of a concerted program to liberalize trade, thereby stimulating growth
and creating badly needed new jobs. More specifically, we need to move towards a
Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area, uniting the North American Free Trade Area with
a European Union enlarged to incorporate the Central European countries.

I realize this may not seem the most propitious moment in American
politics to advocate a new trade agreement. But the arguments against free trade
between advanced industrial countries and poor Third World ones -- even if I
accepted them, which I do not -- certainly do not apply to a Trans-Atlantic Free
Trade deal.

Such a trade bloc would unite countries with similar incomes and levels of
regulation. It would therefore involve much less disruption and temporary job
loss -- while still bringing significant gains in efficiency and prosperity. This
has been recognized by American labor unions, notably by Mr. Lane Kirkland in a
series of important speeches. And it would create a trade bloc of unparalleled
wealth (and therefore influence) in world trade negotiations.

Of course, economic gains are only half of the argument for a
Trans-Atlantic Free Trade area. It would
also provide, my friends, solid economic underpinning to America's continued military
commitment to Europe, while strengthening the still fragile economies and
political countries of Central Europe. It would be, in effect, the economic
equivalent of NATO and, as such, the second pillar of Atlantic unity -- the
first, security; the second, trade -- under
American leadership.

Yet, let us never forget that there is a third pillar
-- the
political one. The West is not just some Cold War construct, devoid of significance in
today's freer, more fluid world. It rests upon distinctive values and virtues,
ideas and ideals, and above all on a common experience of liberty. True, the Asia-Pacific may be fast becoming the new center of global economic
power. Quite rightly, both the United States and Britain take an ever closer
interest in developments there. But it is the West -- above all perhaps, the English-speaking peoples of the
West -- that has formed that system of liberal democracy which is politically
dominant and which we all know offers the best hope of global peace and
prosperity. In order to uphold these things, the Atlantic political relationship
must be constantly nurtured and renewed.

So we must breathe new life into the
consultative political institutions of the West such as the
Atlantic Council and the
North Atlantic Assembly. All too often, my friends, they lack influence and
presence in public debate. Above all, however -- loathe as I am to suggest another gathering of international leaders
-- I would
propose an annual summit of the heads of government of all the North Atlantic
countries, under the chairmanship of the President of the United States.

What all this adds up to is not another supra-national entity. That would be
unwieldy and unworkable. It is something more subtle, but I hope more durable: a
form of Atlantic partnership which attempts to solve common problems while
respecting the sovereignty of the member States. In the course of identifying
those problems and co-operating to solve them, governments would gradually
discover that they were shaping an Atlantic public opinion and political
consciousness.

The reaction, fifty years ago, to that
earlier Fulton speech was
swift, dramatic and, at first, highly critical. Indeed, to judge from the
critics you would have imagined that it was not Stalin but Churchill who had
drawn down the Iron Curtain. But for all the immediate disharmony, it soon became evident that Fulton had
struck a deeper chord. It resulted in a decisive shift in opinion: by May, the
opinion polls recorded that 83 percent of Americans now favored the idea of a
permanent alliance between the United States and Britain, which was subsequently
broadened into NATO.

By speaking as and when he did, Churchill guarded against a repetition of the
withdrawal of America from Europe which, after 1919, allowed the instability to
emerge that plunged the whole world -- including America -- into a second war.

Like my uniquely distinguished predecessor, I too may be accused of alarmism
in pointing to new dangers to which present institutions -- and attitudes -- are
proving unequal. But, also like him, I have every confidence in the resources
and the values of the Western civilization we are defending.

In particular, I believe -- to use Churchill's words,
for there are no better -- that: "If all British
moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal
association, the highroads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for
all, not only for our time, but for a century to come."